The week that was

Sunday was the Plymouth Olympic distance Triathlon. I did a new pb of 23 mins for the swim, which A's had bettered by only 4 seconds, though i didn't know this until i got to transition and he was still there, putting on his cycling shoes. Its amazing how much faster a wetsuit makes you swimming; 3, maybe even 4 minutes over 1500m compared to the pool. The bike was one hill after another so felt like I was only ever either flying down, or struggling up a gradient, and didn’t ever really settle onto my tribars and power out some speed. I caught up A’s at 18km and had a brief ‘Hey’ ‘Hows it going’ as I went past. The run was fine for about 3k, but then I began to feel the early onset of cramp in my quads after going up ‘Murder’ hill. This seemed to clear on the flat, then flare up again on any up hill sections, though it never stopped me completely. Mind games I think. I crossed the line in the sunshine some 11 minutes quicker than my time last year. I really feel that I'm making progress and I think if I train hard this year I could make it into the top 20 next year. Great day.

Monday, one day later than Craig David, I chilled.

Tuesday I had my MOT. Everything on the exhaust seems to have become completely knackered. They managed to weld the manifold, but I needed several new hose bits and a new catalytic converter, not because it was knackered itself, but the pipe next it was corroded beyond a weld-repair. With a few other bits and bobs and the labour it was £580. I debated whether or not it was worth paying this out, but my dad convinced me it was. I wasn’t so sure, but went with his judgement. I'm going to save £200 a month this year and buy a new car next year. At least that’s the plan. In the evening I went fishing and finally caught some fish - 4 mackerel to be precise and I eat them for dinner. I caught one on a pink sand eel lure, and then 3 on some feathers.

Wednesday night I went surfing after work with two friends from work. It was predicted as 3-4 stars on Magic Seaweed, but the blue sky and sunshine had larger stakes in my decision to go. We went to Polzeath, which is probably the nearest north coast break, and it was really clean surf, if a little busy. I got out after about 90 minutes and had a look around the rock pools while I waited for the others to get out.

Thursday night the housemates and I discovered yet another reason why the flat by the sea is the best in Plymouth. We have joined the local Tennis club, which cost the mind bogglingly pitiful sum of £15 for the year. The tennis court is grass, but a little bit rubbish, but out behind the court there is a bowling green, another big grass area and a BBQ. It overlooks the sea and is absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t believe there was no one there, and the groundsman later told me that it rarely got used, which seems ridiculous. It’s like having a massive garden for £15 a year.

Friday night (tonight) I'm off back to Bris for a BBQ with friends before we head out on a canoeing trip. We get driven upriver by the canoe company, paddle/float our way down river then camp for the night and then carry on the next day before getting picked up and driven back. Sounds simply wonderful to me.

Have I been in the aquarium too long? How have I missed this sneaking up?



(and here)

Wheres the hype? Frenzy? (and ultimately dissapointment?)

Plus for all you Porno Pants fans, heres a rare glimpse of them in action...

PP: Episode 8

Bournemouth Tri was a wash out. The swim got cancelled due to some waves which didn’t really compare to those we swam in at Bude. The wind was quite bad though, and both the Sprint and Olympic events got reduced to a 5k 20k 5k duathlon (run bike run). We had travelled over to Bournemouth on the Saturday, found our £23 B&B and guessed how long it had been since the rooms had been decorated; the latest estimate being 1985. At 5.15 the next morning my phone did its light up, vibrate, then beep alarm routine and we quickly showered, eat as many Weetabix as we dared and wheeled the bike down towards the seafront. The news of the swim cancellation came as no surprise and we racked our bikes and moaned about paying so much money out only for the race to be thwarted by a bit of wind. JC went off at 6.30, DC at 6.40 and A’s at 7. I had an hour to kill until my ‘veteran’ wave went off, which I spent cheering the others on as they came and left the transition area on their various legs, and warming my hands under a drier in the men’s toilets. I didn’t spend as long as I wanted to in there though for fear of the Porno Pants + Mens toilets + hanging around equalling some unwanted gay event that probably would have been worth blogging about. Both the run legs were the same out and back along the promenade and the bike was an undulating dual carriageway, all under the supervision of a relentless wind and rain. I hit 60km/h down one hill with the wind behind me, then struggled to average 20km/h on the way back with the wind and rain in my face. I must have sworn 20 times as rain dripped off my helmet and face and the puddles splashed up over my legs and filled my shoes. I sprinted the last 200 m and gritted my teeth as the wind sand-blasted my legs and I swore another 10 times.

Plymouth Olympic is in 2 weeks. I think if it rains then as well I am going to have to give some serious consideration to emigration.

Bude Shoreline Triathlon (Porno Pants: Episode 7)

The water surface turns the suns light into visible rays, which penetrate to deep beds of kelp and rocks below. Both of my ears are water logged and there is little sound. I turn my head to breath and my right ear and eye break the surface. I see a flash of blue sky, some bubbling water and something of the dark shape that is the guy in a wetsuit next to me. The water in my ear clears and I suddenly hear a harsh churning of sound which just as quickly gets muffled again as my head turns back and ear goes under the water. This cycle of looking at the bottom, turning to breath, seeing some sky, ear clearing then blocking continues for about 5 minutes as I head out towards the buoy. The rocky bottom begins to get split up by lines of sand and eventually the dark aquamarines of the start have become completely saturated by the white sand. The water too becomes murky as the increasing waves pick up the sand and give it a smoothie-making blitz. By the time I arrive at the buoy the protection of a sea wall to my left has reduced to nothing and the full force of the surf is pounding us. Staying upright and breathing is becoming difficult, which I’m forced to give priority to above swimming for a few seconds. I manage to get to within 5 metres of the buoy and tread water for a bit, waiting for a space amongst the bodies to join in their migration around it and in towards the beach. A wave washes the buoy close to me, and for an instant I think I can make it around, only for the same wave to wash me backwards to from where I had just come. The wave passes and the buoy springs further back on its chain, now 20 metres away. I try again with similar results, and decide its best to just swim the long way round it than mess about playing dodge-buoy.


The swim at low tide- the buoy that caused all the trouble is just about visible

The rest of the race went well. I made it around the bike course with no crashes(!) and marvelled, and then checked out the two women who overtook me during the race - one on the bike and one on the run, after starting 5 minutes behind. The first was the eventual winner, Flora Duffy, who will be competing in the Beijing Olympics representing Bermuda, and was a proper little hottie with a very nice bike. The other was Helen Parkinson, who, it turns out was World Quadrathlon champion in 2006, and was a very tall hottie with a very nice behind. Both of them were going too fast to get a proper ogle at though.

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The summer of SMARTBuddy sport continues in 2 days with the Bournemouth Olympic distance tri. The only thing of note is my first progression to the world of being 30: The race is split up into age groups, and they take your age from the 31st December, which is after I will be 30. This means that I will have to start in the ‘old persons’ 30 years old and above group, and I have a ‘30’ in the age column next to my name in the start list, whihc is both untrue and unfair. Worse of all is that A’s is in the 18-29 group, and will start an hour before me so we won’t be able to race in ‘real time’ and will have to just compare times afterwards.

In summary, I’m upset about being nearly 30.

Half birthday

My good friend A’s had his birthday at the weekend, which falls on the same day as my half birthday. For those not in the know, your half birthday is 6 months after your whole birthday. I only started celebrating my half birthday because it rained on A’s whole birthday parade, but its stuck, and once you start down the road of diving up the birthday year, various fractions of quarter, sixth and twelfth- birthday fragments are all available as excuses to get some cake in. It’s also nice to have a day in the summer – the longest day – to do some birthday type stuff, rather than having a day in the winter (the shortest day of the year – curse my luck!) when everyone’s already made plans for a Christmas party and can’t make it down the pub.

We had decided to do the Croyde Aquathlon, which is a Triathlon without the cycling bit, so I didn’t have any excuse to wear my new Porno pants and packed only ‘normal’ running shorts. We set off for the coast, put up our tents and watched in horror as the clouds swept in and began to rain on both of our various birthday fraction parades. The damp Saturday morning continued to keep any high spirits in check and we ate Weetabix in large units in the hope they would see us through the forthcoming efforts.

The sea was quite flat, the briefing anything but, and the enthusiasm of the race organiser made me smile. I struggled into my new swimming wetsuit and everyone pointed and laughed at my apparently strange shaped right knee. Ive never noticed this peculiarity before, and think it’s just an artifact of wearing the wetsuit. I wondered if I should put on my latest gadget - some mask-type goggles for the run to the sea, but feared they might steam up too quickly. I decided to hold them in my hand until getting into the water, and when the mini fog horn thing sounded, I set off in a crowd of rubber clad bodies down the beach. I went off to the left of the pack so as to get some clean water to swim into. I’ve been in the mix of the swim start before and once was definitely enough. The water felt quite warm on my head, and it was fine to get straight into the swimming rather than flail about doing breaststroke thinking ‘Ooooh it’s a tad chilly isn’t it?!’ We swam out to a big orange buoy, back in to a man on the beach then out and back around another buoy, making a big ‘M’ shape.

Check out my dodgy shaped knee!

A’s was just finishing getting changed when I arrived in transition and bid me farewell, shouting ‘take your time’ as he left for the run section. I wrestled my wetsuit off and trainers on, then followed him some 30 seconds later.

My back with A's in the distance and some very young looking race officials!

I remained this distance behind him for the whole race, never quite making any headway into the gap between us. I crossed the finish line and heard someone heaving, and looked over to see A’s puking up some of the extra Weetabix that hadn’t been required in beating me.

Well done mate.

Next stop in this summer of multi sport events is the Bude Sprint Triathlon on Sunday - and that will definitely be a porno pants outing!

Who my parents were

I had a trip home the other weekend. I pulled the car up onto the drive and looked at the lounge window to see Mum and Dad waving me in, just as they always do, even when I arrive late. Mum had made some multi-grain bread and a fruit cake, as she has for the past 4 visits, all stemming from an off the cuff remark about quite liking them 5 months ago (my Nan did the exact same thing with Welsh cakes for a decade). Dad is eager to show me his new iPod and is grateful for me posting him the software to get it up and running on his computer. He hasn't quite grasped the magnitude of what 80GB is though, bless him, as he has only put 2 or 3 songs from each of his 16 albums as he 'doesn't want to fill it up with rubbish.'

I settle in with a cup of tea, and we have an hour or so of chatting about how I've been getting on at work and what the family have been up to. My parents both show smiles and flashes in their eyes as they talk about how much 'the boys' - my nephews - have grown up. Myles (my 5 year old nephew) had apparently seen me running the London marathon the previous week, which was a surprise, as I had been severely hungover in bed at the time it was on. He had seen a tall blonde guy (I later worked out to be the American Ryan Hall) and had decided that it must have been me. I'm happy with this, as have recently been compared to Peter Crouch (again) and Johnny Rotten (oh dear), both of which are a level down from America's premier distance runner.

Anyway, I digress.

Dad had made a new collage of photos in the study. He does this quite a lot. There are collages of my holiday photos, my sisters wedding, and old family photos scattered all around the house. He has made a photo area under the stairs, and there must be 50 pictures there, so tightly packed that its hard to take them all in. Dad once found a picture of his mum when she was in her 20s, taken just as she was about to tee off from the 18th hole of their local golf course in Bathampton. The next week he was up there pulling the same pose, on the same tee, but some 60 years later. The next Christmas all of his siblings got a framed version of both pictures, which dad just couldn't smile enough at as he gave out.

The study collage is a little more interesting though. It's old photos of my mum and dad. There are a few photos of their wedding which I've seen before, but some new ones of them camping, my dad surfing, and playing the guitar. In an age of waterproof digital cameras and several attempts, I've never got a photo of me surfing that is as good as this one. Maybe its the black and white, maybe i can, or would like to see shades of myself in my dads youth, but they're the most interesting photos I've ever seen.

In one, my mum and dad are sat having a BBQ by the sea, which is my favourite ever pastime. My dads car in the background with the boards on the roof is the coolest thing I've ever seen. There is one of dad in a garden, with his sister and his old 8ft Bilbo fibreglass long board that I can just remember being in the loft when i was a kid. I remember stories they have told me which are suddenly more real with these pictures to illustrate them. I start to see pathways through their life to mine; memories of being a kid, sitting on the work bench while my dad fixed the car and told me every step of what he was doing - he probably learnt those skills on the car in the picture. My mum is unrecognisable, with long brown hair, looking away from the camera, probably a bit shy. It reminds me of my group of friends camping, and some of the girls being shy of a camera - I wonder what my mum was like at this young age. The photos are long before me or my sister came along, long before there were the pressures of parenting and paying the mortgage. They're just a young couple on the beach, but the same young couple who went on to become my parents, who made me, who moulded my character, to who I owe everything that I am.

I think about these pictures a lot over the next few weeks. I think about how I'm much older now than they were at the time, and what, if anything this means. I think about how much older they are now - my dad is 60 next year - and try not to think about how frail and old they currently looked with a picture of their prime to compare to. Most of all I think about the fact that they wont be around to ask me about work, or bake me multi-grain bread forever and I vow to make more of an effort to make them happy and proud.






To Mum and Dad, I love you

Voilà la conversation dans le camping

The memories of having a BBQ on the beach, with a sunset and friends stood around, nobody quite able to imagine quite how nice the moment is, will be the overriding memory of the trip.


There was lots of wine, of course, and several downpours that tested the smiling resolve, but certain hours in a holiday, and in your life just stand out from the rest.

The campsite was deserted, with maybe as few as 15 of the 200+ pitches taken, and 6 of those were filled by the tents we had just about managed to squeeze into our rucksacks. The beach was a 2 minute walk away, and unlike Le Grand Plage in Biarittz that we later visited, there were no other tourists around, so miles of golden sand in either direction was ours. We spent the days eating baguettes on the beach, trying out our school book French (much like Ant) that we remembered from Tricolore 1. We walked or bussed to a few different beaches and took in steaks and mussels, complete with miniature crabs, in some restaurants far too posh to be wearing sandy board shorts.


I also had my new compact camera, which when combined with my waterproof bag-type-thingy enabled me to get a few OK shots of some of the locals ripping the waves apart.


Then before long it was time to head back home to the inevitable post holiday blues, and sit in my room wondering if I should give up my job and go travelling. Writing this a few days later, I'm back in the groove and happy again, but it is slightly concerning how rapidly I flit between states of mind.

Similarly, the girl situation has become more complex. I had hoped that the Biarittz trip would consolidate or rule out things with The Twin, but neither has really happened, and for a variety of reasons I’m not sure where we stand, and if that place is even in the same country as to where we should be standing. I think my eyes have been opened to the fact that I’m probably not ready for a serious relationship – but I’m unsure as to whether that means its OK to keep seeing the Twin every two or three weeks, or if it would be a better thing to do to call time on it.

Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a tribute blog to Adrian mole, so onwards we go. I’ve got the small matter of an Ironman-distance swim this Sunday which I feel hopelessly under prepared for, but am looking forward to seeing family and friends back in the homeland. June has arrived – not one minute shall I waste.

A Bientot.